The whole issue was brought to my attention
first by, of course, the barrage of Facebook comments from friends. My Christian friends were outraged,
“disgusted” was the word someone used, and hurt by what they saw as the
betrayal of an organization that had heretofore claimed that it hung closely on
Biblical morals. My non-Christian
friends were praising World Vision and excited about a religious organization
finally “getting it right” as they saw it, and accepting people, and opening their doors to the homosexual Christian society.
Me? Well, I guess
I was somewhere in the middle. (Me in the gray area?! Don’t worry, that’s not
the part I thought would surprise you!)
I didn’t immediately form an opinion, or jump on one bandwagon or
another. I read several blogs of respected people, some for and some against, I
watched my friends battle it out over Facebook, I read up on World Vision’s
actual announcement and why they said they made that decision, and I just kept
thinking one thing…
What would Jesus
do? What would his response be if He
were here today?
As I prayed I suddenly thought about a passage of
scripture I had read at some point. I couldn’t
remember exactly where it was, so I had to search for it, but I finally found
it in Mark chapter 9…
38 And John answered
him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he
followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us.
39 But Jesus said,
Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that
can lightly speak evil of me.
40 For he that is not
against us is on our part.41 For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.
42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
This scripture
stood out to me because Jesus basically told them that, if these other people
were doing it in his name, let them do it!
I love how he says: For he that is not against us is on our side!
Then right after that he talks about helping little ones
that believe in him, and not offending them.
So what would Jesus do?
I think Jesus would treat World Vision like he did those people the
Apostles told him about. I think he
would say, Hey, they are doing a good thing, helping little children in my
name. Just because they don’t “follow”
our way exactly, or they do things a little differently, well, things done in my
name will never be done in vain.
He will
get the glory. And maybe, just maybe,
some expected person along the way would be changed because of it? That would be my hope.
I also found this scripture when I was looking for the
other one...it’s about a lady that was walking behind Jesus and the Apostles
and crying after them to have mercy on her daughter whom she thought was
possessed. It says she was “crying aloud”
or screaming after them to listen to her.
This was Jesus’ and the Apostles response in Matthew 15:
23
But he (Jesus) answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying,
Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.
25
Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to
cast it to dogs.
When I read this, I thought, here was a woman who was not
a follower of Jesus, and she was not a Jew. She was actually a Canaanite, who
worshipped false gods, and the Jews couldn't stand her. But here she was, probably at the end of her rope, doing
whatever she could to help her daughter.
Jesus’ disciples felt like she was bugging them and wanted Jesus to send
her away, get rid of her, so they could get busy doing his work. What they said here reminded me of what they
said in the other passage in Mark about those who “follow us not”. They are again saying, Hey Jesus, this lady
doesn’t believe things the way we do.
Send her away.
I’m so curious as to why Jesus was silent at first before
the disciples finally spoke! I really
feel like it was to see what his followers would do, how they would respond
to this one who was not like them. Would they sneer
their noses and want her out of their presence, or would they have compassion
on her, even though she was unworthy and not like them? Well, true to form (and so much like we
Christ-followers today still do!) they responded by wanting her to go away,
leave them alone, not mar their work.
Jesus then responds to them all, again still teaching EVERYONE at
this point (his disciples AND the Canaanite woman), by saying “I’m here to save
my people, the children of Israel”. The
lady then comes to him and asks for his help.
Jesus tells her that it’s not right to take food that is for your kids
and give it to the dogs under the table.
That sounds harsh but it was his way of stating what the Jews, his
disciples, were already thinking, for they called all Canaanites dogs! To me, this would be like Christians looking
at World Vision and saying, well it’s not right to give a job that a regular
Christian could have helping kids in Christ’s name to a gay person. To me it’s similar because of what happens
next…
Matthew 15:
27
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their
masters' table.
28
Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto
thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
She came to Jesus not to help herself, or because she
thought she needed help. She came to get
help for a child. She believed Jesus
could help. She was an outsider and she
knew it. But she came anyway.
“Homosexual Christians” is a title that makes every
fundamental Christian have eye twitches and cringe in anger. To many of us, we consider that an
impossibility. To many of us, they are dogs that
do not deserve to share the title of “Christian” with us. We want them to stay away. Not be a part of anything we are doing. As far as World Vision goes, if a gay person
came into a Christian organization to help a child, well, what if they began to “eat
of the crumbs”, and what if they saw Jesus’ compassion and truth and honesty
and gentleness in the hearts of those Christians they worked with? What if they saw Jesus working all around them? Would it change them? If we want them to stay away, how do we expect them to change? This woman's life, and her daughter's life, never would have changed if the disciples had gotten their way.
Here comes the
part that may surprise some of you who feel like I am too liberal on this
particular topic…
I can see why hiring a homosexual couple would not match
World Vision’s contractual description for their employees. I can see why the evangelical Christian world
was upset about this announcement that goes against World Vision’s previous
strict code of Biblical moral ethics. Are you surpised?!! I agreed it wasn’t the best idea and seemed
confusing and to go against what they stand for!
But…(hey, come
on, you knew there was "but" in there!), my angst, as always, comes in seeing how
the Christians response today was much like the Apostles and disciples response
of long ago: outrage and disgust and irritation. We want to “forbid” it! Tell them to stop! That is not our way, you are not following
us, you can’t do that and say you are a Christian organization, don’t give that
“dog” any of our food…
What would Jesus
do? Well, ironically enough, it
seems he did the same thing he did when dealing with Canaanite woman. He waited.
He “answered not a word” and waited to see what we would do.
And what did we do?
We bullied World Vision into doing it our way and keeping the outcast
away, shooing the “dog” away from table.
And we got our way. World Vision changed their ruling and "forbid" the gay community from working with them in Jesus name.
This is a quote from Rachel Held Evans’ blog about this topic:
“it puts into stark, unsettling relief just how out-of-control the evangelical obsession with homosexuality has become. Organizations don’t get “farewelled” for hiring divorcees. People don’t get kicked out of their churches for struggling with pride or for not wearing head coverings when they pray. (See “Everyone’s a Biblical Literalist Until You Bring Up Gluttony.”) But when it comes to homosexuality, Trevin Wax and many others have decided “the gospel is at stake.”
See Rachel's whole blog about this here: (note: I don't agree wit all her ideas, but she does bring up good points!)http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/world-vision?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RachelHeldEvans+%28Rachel+Held+Evans+-+Blog%29 Now, before you get bent out of shape, let me say this: I
DO disagree with World Vision’s choice to allow gay “married” employees. I feel like that is recognizing sin and
choosing to justify it by the world’s rules.
I do, however, feel like World Vision DID try to welcome the outcasts to
the table, they just didn't necessarily do it the right way! I feel like it would have been ok to hire a gay person with the understanding that they remain single and celibate while in their employ. It would be the same as hiring an alcoholic and asking them to remain sober and stay away from alcohol while in their employ. It's the whole "you live in our house, you abide by our rules" thing. However, even the way it happened, I do feel like it could have still been recovered and used for the cause of Christ.
These two scriptures have one thing in common…both of these
groups of people worshipped Jesus and did things in his name. They didn’t do it perfectly, or right. But they claimed faith in his name. Jesus praised one for her abundant faith, and
told his disciples to leave the other ones alone because they were still doing
things in his name.
That was what I personally felt my response to the World
Vision thing would be…just leave them alone, let them do things in Jesus’ name,
let them keep helping “the least of these” and, in midst of that, dropping bread crumbs to
those who don’t even know they’re starving.
“For he that is not against us is on
our part.”
Now, we (Christians) have again angered
the homosexual community, we have bullied them and cast them away, we treated
them like they are not worthy of any crumb from our table. And we threatened and forced a group of
Christians to bend to our will. That’s
not the message of Jesus.
What would Jesus
do?
I think he would have said, Don’t forbid them. They want to do something in my name? Let
them. Because in doing so, they WILL be
exposed to those crumbs that fall from my table. My Word will go out. My name will be praised. And it will not return void.
I know I’ll get some backlash for this…please just be
kind. Again, I’m not saying it was a
good choice for World Vision. All am
saying is that our response to that could have been different. I’m sure if we all dug deeper into World
Vision’s Statement of Faith there would be many things that many of us would
disagree with them on. But we don’t
dig. Because we don’t really care about those other things. Why? Because we feel like they are doing a
good thing in Jesus’ name. I still feel
like they would have been capable of doing a good thing in Jesus’ name. Who knows how this might have changed the Christian/Homosexual
war that is raging in our society right now?
I’ll leave you with this thought:
Jesus showed compassion.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t call sin for what it was, or ignored it, or
accepted it. He spoke the truth always. But, even then, he did so with compassion,
always offering a place at his table, even if that place began with just the
crumbs.
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